simple
two-sailed heavy sloop to that perfection of naval architecture, the
Clipper schooner of Baltimore, with her long tapering masts raking over
her taffrail, and her symmetrical hull fairly leaping out of water, as
though she moved from wave to wave by a succession of graceful bounds
rather than held her course by cleaving a pathway through them, as did
her more cumbrous fellows.

The eye was charmed and the heart elevated by these unequivocal
evidences of thriving commerce sweeping towards the city; which rises
gradually, as it spreads over the face of the irregular hill it
occupies. Several domes of considerable magnitude, a tall column or two,
with various towers and spires, rendered conspicuous from the nature of
the site, invest it with an air of much importance, and have gained for
it the title of the City of Monuments.

The main street, like that of Boston, has very much the look of an
English county-town; and the air of the shops is wholly English. I
wandered about here guided by curiosity and caprice,--the only cicerone
I ever desire,--and saw most things worthy note. I attended service at
the cathedral, where I heard mass admirably performed, for in this
choir are several voices of a very high order.

The interior of the church is good; the altar most worthily fitted up;
and the general effect would be imposing were it not marred by the
introduction of regular lines of exceedingly comfortable but most
uncatholic-looking pews, with the which, I confess, I felt so vexed,
that I could have found in my heart, Heaven pardon me! to have wished
them fairly floating in the bay, only for the delicate creatures who sat
within them, on whose transparent brows and soft dark eyes it was
impossible to look and breathe a wish or harbour a thought of evil.

I next mounted the Washington column, as it is called, and beheld a
sunset from its top that would have well recompensed a poet or painter
for a journey over "the broa-a-d At-alantic," as poor Incledon used to
emphasize it.

This is a noble column and splendidly put together, of workmanship and
material calculated to endure,--lasting, unimpeachable by time or
change, as is the fame of the patriot to whose virtues it is well
inscribed; but the statue itself is bad, ineffective, and in no
situation or distance I could discover at all like the great original,
whose personal characteristics were nevertheless striking, and well
adapted for the artist.

The inverted